Ornamental Grasses

“Animal House”

ESPatch Jun 14, 2010 17 comments

This week I have found many new and old visitors alike taking a flutter or a crawl down the winding decomposed granite pathways in the Patch, and I am not referring to the after-effects of ingesting Leah’s sangria, though I could be.

There are hunters and predators lurking everywhere, under and above leaves, in the sky and on the ground,

Hard to spot hunters hunting down the tastiest foliage, like this…

Texas Spotted Range Grasshopper,

Psoloessa texana

you have to look really hard to spot this grasshopper, even it’s eyeballs are camouflaged! I only ever witness this beast if I happen to disturb one, then I have to follow the enormous jump and endure the subsequent heat and mosquito ravaged hunt in a general vicinity to find it again. They have remarkable colored “flashes” on their legs, that I have still yet to capture on camera. The wings look exactly like leaf skeletons.

“Croak…I love grasshoppers…burp!”

The Gulf Coast toads have been busy in my feeder stock-tank the last few weeks…

…laying strings and floating mountains of toad spawn. I always keep a close eye on the amount of toad spawn in my above ground stock tank pond after my “Primordial Soup” escapade a couple of years back. I still harbor night terrors from that episode and the flatulent machine I rented that was supposed to help alleviate the situation:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2008/08/primordial-soup/

And look…

A baby Jewels of Opar! (at least I think it is). Unfortunately it chose a really bad spot to germinate on one of my pathways, I will relocate it when it gets bigger. Considering how many seeds this plant sent out last year I have only seen three new plants so far and they are in wildly different areas of the Patch!

“All this talk of things eating things has made me hungry!”

(Watermelon courtesy of Pam at digging: http://www.penick.net/digging/). I think we can safely say this melon was a total hit with this “Harry” Pam! Needless to say a whole bunch of seeds came spluttering my way seconds after the shutter closed.

This one goes out to you…

“…your the Pam, your the Pam!” :-)

More tiny eggs are turning up on my Mexican lime tree that, incidentally is making a valiant growth effort after I had to take the wood-cutter’s axe to it after the winter freezes. The Giant Swallowtail butterflies swarm citrus trees, giving them their other common name: “Orange Dogs”. The larvae are bird dropping mimics, and retain this nasty presentation into maturity. Because of their camouflage, they can often be found feeding right out in the open on their host plants. I have a bunch of their larvae at various stages of excremental development…

Papilio cresphontes larva

Yes, not the most aesthetically pleasing of creatures I agree, but a very effective deterrent for any would-be predators, after all who would want to eat ….?

I bet Andrew would also love to get his chops into a few of these brightly colored caterpillars lined up on a skewer! This is the strangely named Io moth caterpillar, I found it lurking in leaves under my ivy.

Automeris io

The feet are very animated.

The larvae start off orange and as they develop turn bright green. The caterpillars are covered in black-tipped spines that cause a lot of pain if touched. It is reported that the Naboo use these spines as poisoned blow-darts on occasion, but that is another story. The spines have a poison that is released with the slightest touch. The green caterpillars have two lateral stripes, the upper one being red and the lower one white. When the caterpillars are ready, they spin a flimsy, cocoon made from a dark, coarse silk. Some larvae will crawl to the base of a tree and make their cocoons amongst leaf litter on the ground, while others will use living leaves to wrap their cocoons with. The leaves will turn brown and fall to the ground during autumn, taking the cocoons with them. Look at what they turn into!

Here are the adult moths female top, male below. (picture courtesy of Wikipedia).

Amazing looking nocturnal moths!

Equally amazing are the

Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterflies that are now showing up in the Patch

Agraulis vanillae

It is orange with black markings on the tops of the wings. Underneath it has silvery white spots. This one being a lighter orange is a female. I love the contrast topside to underside of these birds, they look like totally different butterflies. Plant a passionflower and watch them turn up!

Incredible coloration.

The Texas Spiny Lizard

Sceloporus olivaceus

is a common resident of most of Texas. It spends a great deal of time on fence posts and in trees like this one in my post oak, searching for food, but can be encountered on rocks or on the ground. This spiny lizard can grow to almost 1 foot in length!

Picture from Wikipedia: pretty fancy!

Colors and patterns typically serve to be adequate camouflage against the bark of trees in its chosen habitat. Their scales have a distinctly spiny texture to them, and their long toes and sharp claws are suited to climbing. I have seen more of these spiny lizards this year then I have ever seen before, not sure why?

Unlike anoles who appear to enjoy getting their faces into the camera, these spiny lizards are really easily spooked and extremely fast. This one “galloped” away and up into my post oak before I could say…

“My beans are finally at the top of the poles, and flowering!”…Or…

“Lots of new growth on my purple hearts and fountain grass!”

The Patch is entering the dog days of summer once again,

my fingers are crossed for a more lenient one then last year.

For now the sun is setting in the Patch so I bid you a warm Walton’s goodnight.

“Night Jim Draco Bob, night Pam, night Jenny(s) (RR the kids loved doing the wooden puzzles), night Les, night Daphne, night Germi (it was great to meet you), night Linda, night Meredith, night Texas Deb, night Diana, night Laura, night Cheryl, night Katina, night Ellie…etc,etc.

Stay Tuned for:

“Shaken not Stirred”

All material © 2010 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

Go England!

Check out the Patch write up at: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/greengarden/award_sanbernard.htm

“Knotty Dreads”

ESPatch May 8, 2010 8 comments

Now these are some knotty dreads man, all matted and stuck together. The panicles on my Mexican feather grasses had created such a dense matting situation, that it was making their heads fall over.

They looked pretty bad all stuck together like island hair… mmm, what to do, what to do? I picked my first test subject and just like…

I went to work, frantically snipping out all the seed heads with my prosthetic shearing fingers…

…unlike Edward’s reputable pruning results, mine were not so good, not so good at all (left), it just looked really unnatural. As I pondered what else I could do to remedy this situation, I grabbed one of the seed heads and pulled it, it easily came away from the plant….that was it! I went to another grass, grabbed a small chunk and sure enough the seeds and a length of the panicle stalk came away from the plant. This technique ensured that the plant retained a more natural look while getting rid of the matted dreadlock situation… it worked a treat to lighten the entire grass (right).

Here they are back to their former glory once again. I systematically went through all my grasses pulling their hair out. I did get a little greedy on the amount that could be removed in a one extraction a couple of times, resulting in a small clump of the grass coming up out of the ground, oops! No, there was a fine balance to be heeded in this hair-pulling activity. By the time I was about halfway through my grasses I had the technique mastered, gathering the dreadlocks into clumps and working my way around the plant as though it were a scalp, I must have looked insane, especially when I started to lay out a cape (courtesy of my professional hair cutting wife) around each plant to catch any falling hair follicles, errr…I mean seeds!

I shoved these seeds into a large bucket as I went on, and on, and…

A couple of hours later, I had about four of these seed-bales filling up my trash can, there must have been millions of seeds.

Moving on…

Butterflies, moths, all manner of things a’ flutter were feasting this week on copious amounts of the sweet stuff. This one it seems had the whole salty / sweet thing going on. It stayed on my tee shirt for a few minutes (quite salty at this point). I am guessing there was enough moisture on the garment from the feather grass thinning in our 101 degree (with the heat index) temperatures to extract something nourishing out of it? Whatever it was getting from my garment, it was liking it.

More from the bench area…

Ever since I finished my bench the spaces to the left and right of it seemed somewhat lost, floating around in space.

“Roger that Houston, both sides of the bench, but can I say “gimbal lock” one last time?”

I decided to reflect the opposite bed to the bench and continue the same brickwork design to form a couple of small beds to finish these areas off, and to visually anchor the bench.

And the other side.

Must remember to move that first canna away from the dwarf Palmetto, it is getting a little crowded right there! The brickwork really helps to make the bench a focal point and destination.

Are those more feather grasses?

“I have some rather disturbing news”…

The Cactus Man has apparently returned from the grave…he is re-animating!

“He is an opuntia ESP”?

I could not believe this when I saw it today. It appears the deceased Cactus Man is attempting to re-create his face and re-animate himself on a new cactus paddle that has grown in exactly the same spot from the same plant where I originally killed him and his family. Now what are the chances of that?

“About 4504 to the power of 10 ESP, now… can’t you see I am busy engaging the Borg?”

Data!

This was one tiny spider. I shot this blind with the camera. I was amazed what shapes and translucent coloration the camera caught.

Sedum potosinum in decline, turning a rust color at the end of it’s bloom cycle.

Vines are on the move…

…pond-life is feeling good…

…and the pole-beans are on the rise.

Captains Log supplemental: Check out my new “ESP Design Services” at the top of my blog, and I hope you like the new sidebar.

ESP.

Stay Tuned for:

“Emergance”

All material © 2010 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.